Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Boycott and Baroness Parminter

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I tabled two amendments in this group. The first, Amendment 202, follows on in a complementary manner to the amendment moved so excellently by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, because it addresses the cost issue of uniforms by asking for the mandating of second-hand uniforms in schools.

I am sure the Minister will say that there is already statutory guidance encouraging schools to provide secondary sales of school uniforms, but her own department did a survey in 2023 and found that some 65% of parents said that their schools provided second-hand sales. That is a significant minority of schools that are not providing it.

It has been estimated that more than 1.4 million quality items of school uniform are lost every year, which is a loss to parents in savings, a cost to us all when local authorities have to deal with the disposal of those uniforms and a cost to the environment in dealing with the plastics and the carbon that comes from disposing of those garments.

In this amendment, I call for the mandating of schools to provide second-hand uniforms. If the Minister is not able to agree to that at the end of noble Lords’ remarks, I hope that in the refresh of the upcoming sustainability and climate change strategy she might think about the issue of uniforms, which was not in the previous strategy. Clearly, looking at the affordability of uniforms and sustainability could a be a win-win for parents and for the environment.

My second amendment, Amendment 202A, deals with a slightly different issue: the health impacts of school clothing on young people and the inclusion of forever chemicals, PFAS, in much of the clothing that young people are wearing. They are called forever chemicals because they do not break down in the environment. There is now emerging evidence of significant negative health impacts in terms of cancer, impacts on fertility and, crucially for young people, neuro development. These PFAS are mainly picked up by people through the skin. For young people, this is a really important issue.

PFAS are added by the manufacturers to give a stain-resilient quality or make clothes ironing-free. But these stain-resistant surfaces do not last—they will be kept on an item of clothing for a maximum of 10 to 20 washes before they are washed away—so there is a limited benefit for a long-term potential health impact on our young people. For this reason, both France and Denmark have got rid of PFAS in clothing. My amendment would insist that the Government stop allowing PFAS to be used in school clothing because of the impact on the welfare of our children.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 202A in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Bennett. This is a fantastically important amendment, and I will be very distressed if the Government do not seize the moment as the knowledge comes into view about what these kinds of chemicals in cheap clothes provide and are putting into our children’s systems.

Jeremy Grantham, who many people may know, has been one of the main funders of climate change research across the world over the last 40 years and indeed was one of the funders behind the LSE and Nick Stern report. I met him about three weeks ago and he said he is no longer providing climate change funding, largely because he thinks it is a more or less foregone conclusion that things are not going well. He has turned his entire industry and scientific might behind looking at PFAS and the chemicals that are in not just our clothing but our soils.

Let us look specifically at clothing around the world. American Airlines has recently been sued because it produced very cheap uniforms for its stewards and stewardesses. They have started to develop incredible ranges of different skin illnesses and internal illnesses. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, found, research in Denmark has shown that prenatal contact to cheaply made fabrics with PFAS in them has led to reductions in IQ among children. France is banning all school uniforms containing PFAS from next year.

Interestingly, Fidra, a big company that works on and looks at the environmental impact of chemicals, says that people want these chemicals in clothing because it is very easy to wash, it dries almost immediately and you never need to iron it. But interestingly, it discovered that people treat these clothes in exactly the same way as they treat something of better quality. Every time you wash it—it is not just when you put it on your skin—bits come off in the washing machine. They are now in circulation: they are in breast milk, placenta and our plants. Our plants are looking at 25% reduction in whole fertility within the next 10 years.

Some of the work that Jeremy Grantham is doing is looking at male fertility. Some people may say we have too many people in the world, but this is probably not the way we want to do it—crashing male fertility and all sorts of things. These are dangerous.

As everybody knows, I have worked on ultra-processed foods. One of the interesting things about these chemicals is that a single one of them on their own may not be dangerous, but they are if you mix them up. That is the whole point of chemistry. That is why we went into chemistry labs for our GCSEs and had fun making things explode. They change.

Those chemicals go into these fabrics. They can be manufactured at immense volume and cheapness. As I say, it is not just the school uniforms but the stuff kids are buying when they can buy 20 garments for 20 quid through a company such as Shein. These are dangerous. We can stop this.

I completely support all the amendments in this group. Yes, I want school uniforms because they are fair, and I want them to be cheap, but I do not want them to be dangerous to our children. Please can the Government start doing something about it? Europe is ahead of us. Other countries are ahead of us. We can do this.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Boycott and Baroness Parminter

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I much appreciated and enjoyed the previous speeches and I think we have made a very good case for the amendments that propose to set targets. I speak in support of Amendment 202 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, which I believe is the most comprehensive of all the amendments as it takes in the vast scope of what we are collectively trying to do. Like many people, I applaud the Government for both the ELMS and the steps they have taken to start to even think about trying to quantify biodiversity and to set targets.

Biodiversity is, as we all know, fantastically difficult; its loss is as much of a threat to mankind as climate change, but it has only a fraction of the public profile. It is incredibly difficult because it is not a thing you can quantify like electricity or transport. It is complicated and messy but, at the end of the day, it is the thing we all care about. I have just a couple of points to make, as many others I wanted to make have already been raised.

The first is the food system which, despite the excellent recent contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Curry, is neglected across the Environment Bill. It is factually established that food contributes 30% to climate change. It is and has been the driver of biodiversity loss. While the noble Lord, Lord Curry, is absolutely right that no farmer wants a farm that is devoid of wildlife, if you go into certain areas of Norfolk or parts of England with really industrial farming, it is like being in a factory; it is not like being in the countryside.

It worries me that, throughout the Environment Bill, the question of what to do with food is being left at the door of the food strategy. I am an adviser on the food strategy and have seen a lot of what will come on 15 July. I assure the Committee that it is absolutely fantastic and has a huge section on the relationship between climate, biodiversity and the food system. But it still worries me that we do not have more on that in the body of the Bill.

I also support Amendment 202 because it makes the point that everyone must be responsible for this. I have talked about it before in this House, but the Knepp rewilding estate in Sussex is, at this moment, at threat of having 3,500 houses plonked on its perimeter. It is ironic because, just recently, Natural England—the Government’s own body—designated Knepp a national nature reserve. The Government have said in the 25-year environment plan that:

“New development will happen in the right places, delivering maximum economic benefit while taking into account the need to avoid environmental damage.”


Many noble Lords have made the point that we cannot just settle with what we have, we must increase it if we are to turn the tide and increase the amount of biodiversity. Knepp has done some extraordinary things: it has 2% of the country’s nightingales, an extraordinary quantity of purple emperor butterflies and has reintroduced storks, not to mention that you can go there and understand how the interaction of the grazer, browser and habitat really work.

It seems absolutely illogical that planning permission should be given to that estate. However, as Isabella Tree has said, it is a question of the odds, and the level is “build, build, build”. She said:

“As usual nature is shouldered out of the ring.”


For its local plan, Horsham District Council is expected to meet a staggering target of 1,200 new houses every year from 2019 until 2036. That is within one small council. Obviously we must have homes, but can we not have a little more thought?

It is worrying that we do not have enough joined-up thinking, because if we do not have that, all the gains that we make will come back and bite us. The great brilliance of the Dasgupta review is that it has looked across the board at the economic value of nature. If we undermine it at this early stage, in the year of the CBD and the COP, taking one of our “national treasures” of rewilding and wildlife, and, in effect, destroying the corridors around it that enable the animals to keep moving would be a deep irony.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister, who is now in his place, for his introduction of the Government’s amendment on the state of nature target. As other noble Lords have said, expectations were high but a word that has been used in response in this Chamber by Members from right across the House is that there has been a level of “disappointment” in the resulting amendment.

I shall speak on Amendment 24, which I co-signed, and was ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Randall, but I want to give a nod to my noble friend Lord Chidgey and his championing tonight of chalk streams, and on many occasions. He is right to raise the issue and I am sure that when a target eventually appears, it will look to address the need to protect the creatures in our rivers and habitats. We are right to raise the issue tonight.

I also thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Jones, for proposing targets that look not just to halt the decline but to improve the quality or our species. They made important points on which I hope the Government will reflect.

I was struck by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, when he said that the road to extinction was paved with good intentions. That is what we are talking about. We are already seeing extinctions of British species and while we do not quibble with the Government’s, indeed the Minister’s, intention to put our wildlife on a stronger footing for the future, we have to make sure that the footing is the strongest possible. It is clear that the state of nature target proposed in Amendment 22 is not that.

As I said, the noble Lord, Lord Randall, gave a brilliant exposition of what our amendment seeks to do and I am not going to tire the patience of the Committee by repeating it. I shall add just one point about why the target is important and it relates to the upcoming CBD conference in October. As the Minister will know, the committee that I chair, the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, is looking at the outcomes that we want to see from the CBD and what the Government need to do. I am grateful for the evidence that he gave to the committee last week.

Yesterday, we took evidence from a panel of four witnesses, ranging from the green groups to business representatives and economic experts. We had witnesses from the World Economic Forum, the RSPB, Unilever and the International Institute for Sustainable Development. We asked them what they wanted the Government to do to help ensure that we get the best possible outcome at the CBD in October. They were in agreement—the economists, the business representative, the green groups and the international sustainable development experts—that they wanted to see the Government leading from the front with a strong, legally binding target in domestic legislation in order to drive up other people’s and other countries’ ambition.

We know that this is important because of the climate change situation. This is a bottom-up target, not a top-down target, with countries coming together, being inspired by each other and levelling up, respecting the sovereign authority of individual countries working collectively. We need a strong domestic target in this piece of legislation which says to other countries “Come with us on this journey; come with global Britain and let’s leave the world in a better place.” The strongest possible target needs to be in the Bill. That is why Amendment 24 is critical, and why the Government need to act on it.

In conclusion, I pay tribute, as other noble Lords have done, to the work of the many Green charities, both large and small, right around the country which have mobilised the voice of people who are passionately concerned about species and want something done. These charities have done a great job and a service to our democracy in mobilising that support. The Government now need to listen, and I look forward to what the Minister has to say.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Boycott and Baroness Parminter

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 166. In doing so, I thank its supporters, the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. I also support everything just said by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. I was lucky enough to sit on the House of Lords committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, which found many cracks and flaws in the food system.

My amendment looks not just at food security, as I want to consider household food security. Sufficient food nationally does not mean that individual households can access it in sufficient quantity, let alone that it is sufficiently healthy food, as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. Since April 2019, the Government have been measuring food insecurity as part of their Family Resources Survey. This data will be available early next year. The Food Standards Agency also collects data on household food insecurity, as part of the Food and You survey. Both surveys are internationally recognised and peer reviewed.

In essence, the Government are already doing this; they are collecting the data on which this amendment would have them report. So, this is not an onerous amendment—it is very simple and cost-neutral. The Government are already doing the work. My amendment simply asks that the information be regularly laid before Parliament. If we do not accept this amendment, the Government will be sending a clear message to the millions who struggle to access healthy food that their hunger and problems are not a priority.

We know that more that 2,000 food banks have become embedded in our welfare system. Even before the pandemic, millions in the UK were food insecure. Now, millions more have joined them. Covid-19 has seen food insecurity levels more than double. Refusing to report to Parliament on food insecurity at a household level lets that problem remain hidden. It is only by knowing the true scale of UK hunger that we can start to mitigate it. We should do this annually because unless you measure something, you cannot change it. In a country as rich as ours, no one should go to bed hungry. Accepting this amendment, which is cost-neutral and simple, would demonstrate that the Government are willing to treat the systemic and worsening problem of food insecurity—in a family, every night, in their kitchen—with the seriousness that it deserves.

[Baroness Parminter (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to be speaking between the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, with whom I sat on the House of Lords committee that produced the report Hungry for Change, about which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and other noble Lords have been so complimentary.

I speak in support of my Amendment 169 in this group. I am grateful for the support of other noble Lords who have added their names to it. It addresses how, if we are to be food secure in this country, we need to ensure that the minimum amount of food is wasted—yet, in the list of data that will be provided in the food security report to inform policy thinking on our future resilience and food security, there is no mention of food waste.

There are currently significant levels of on-farm food waste in this country. In 2019, WRAP estimated that about 3.6 million tonnes of food is surplus, and waste occurs on farm every year. That is equivalent to about 7% of the total annual UK food harvest. There is huge potential to reduce the amount of surplus and waste by promoting best practice, with new insights being good for growers, businesses, the climate and feeding our people.

One of the priority areas in Clause 1 of the Government’s Environment Bill is resource efficiency and waste reduction. We need better synergy between the Environment Bill and the Agriculture Bill, and a way to achieve that is for us to see where the main problems with food waste are in the supply chain. To do that, we need the data to cover each part of the supply chain. My amendment would provide for that, so that we have a food security report that does the job that we need it to do.